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Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

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331–340 of 486 posts

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#331
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

My bank has had MFA literally since the moment they first offered a web service. Hardware authenticators and everything. This was over a decade before any other web service I know of even had optional MFA support.

Must be nice. The major Canadian banks only offered 2FA with SMS until recently and still don't support TOTP or hardware tokens, opting instead for some kind of proprietary flow through their phone app.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#332

It isn't just "make ad-blocking (near) impossible" as the current title of the submission suggests. It is: Make browsing the internet possible only on Chrome, Safari or Edge (with no modifications or extensions). No competition allowed in browsers. Make browsing the internet possible only on macOS, Windows, Android or iOS (no custom Android distributions, definitely no LineageOS or GrapheneOS or whatever). No competi…

If successful, that would make the anti-trust suites against MS seem like childs play.

> “We (Microsoft) are in a very unique position to be able to go spend Sony out of business,” said Booty in a December 2019 email, referencing spending $2 billion or $3 billion in 2020 to avoid competitors getting ahead in content at a later date.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/23774547/microsoft-sony-x...

The FTC lost that case.

I think at this point, if a big tech executive avoids doing something due to the threat of antitrust lawsuits, they're just incompetent.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#333

Do you know what puzzles me most? How can software engineers work on something like this? Don't those paid engineers or involved ones have the balls or dignity to walk away? I'm just wondering how they would feel about this (if they feel anything at all). I mean, if I'd be in such a position and asked to push something like this I'd have walked away on the spot, no matter what you offer me. No one at Google is standi…

I'd go even further. If I was asked to run one of these projects I would subvert & sabotage the entire thing while pretending to be 150% on board.

Why not get paid by the devil while fighting his plans?

You don't even have to make it obvious that you are cratering it. There are so many shiny things in tech you could make it look entirely incidental.

Part of me reserves hope that this is what some of the engineers inside of Google are doing right now.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#334
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There won't be an anti-trust suit. The implicit deal will be we will prevent "misinformation" (favor news sources you support and censor anything you request with our algorithm) and you will allow us to monopolize the internet.

Other countries can do anti-trust as well.

What I am getting at is this is fundamentally a pro-government proposal. Governments like the open web even less than Google.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#335

It isn't just "make ad-blocking (near) impossible" as the current title of the submission suggests. It is: Make browsing the internet possible only on Chrome, Safari or Edge (with no modifications or extensions). No competition allowed in browsers. Make browsing the internet possible only on macOS, Windows, Android or iOS (no custom Android distributions, definitely no LineageOS or GrapheneOS or whatever). No competi…

If that would be the case, then countries with bad relationship with the USA will end up having the real free internet because these tech services and products would be undesirable or inaccessible to them. They might risk political persecution for their online activities but so do people in the "West". The 3rd world will be forced to use homegrown solutions and there's a possibility that they might end up much more innovative when not everything is about advertisements.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla should really double down on Mozilla VPN. Judging by all the NordVPN ads on every major youtuber's video, the profit margins must be astronomical (or their business model must be suspicious). It should provide a good income stream for Mozilla. The entire space is shady and filled with dubious actors. It is just begging to be disrupted by a trustworthy organization. I can't think of a single candidate other th…

VPNs are barely gonna make a dent in their income. What do you think the market is for VPNs? 99% of people don't know what VPN means. Of the remaining 1%, most don't need a VPN for anything personal. It's literally just a handful of geeks who need VPN (mainly for secure piracy, or accessing different regional Netflix catalogs), and maybe a few dozen journalists living in dictatorships. Mozilla needs to gut spending.…

If there is little money in VPNs, how is it that they are funding half the youtubers out there, potentially outbidding everyone else for the adspace.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#337
post #277

Do you know what puzzles me most? How can software engineers work on something like this? Don't those paid engineers or involved ones have the balls or dignity to walk away? I'm just wondering how they would feel about this (if they feel anything at all). I mean, if I'd be in such a position and asked to push something like this I'd have walked away on the spot, no matter what you offer me. No one at Google is standi…

Ok but have you considered that making people watch ads to use an optional service is not a war crime

found the google mole in this thread

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#338
post #287
post #56

Unfortunately, we will all happily accept this. Because using Chrome is "convenient". People will accept anything for convenience — WhatsApp is a good example, where millions of people worldwide happily share and sync their entire phone book with Facebook/Meta. If you care, stop using Chrome. If you criticize this evil move, but continue using Chrome, you are part of the problem.

Please explain the terrible consequences of sharing my phonebook with Meta

Meta use your social connections to create advertising profiles of your friends whether they're on FB or not.

Your social graph is more accessible to other 'actors' than it would be if it weren't on Meta.

You may not care about this kind of thing, but I do. Unfortunately I'm not entirely free of it either, so any finger wagging on my part is at least partially hypocritical.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#339
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

My bank has had MFA literally since the moment they first offered a web service. Hardware authenticators and everything. This was over a decade before any other web service I know of even had optional MFA support.

Okay, top three banks in the US.. Chase requires MFA, but still allows SMS, which can be broken easily with SIM swapping. BoA and Wells Fargo MFA can be completely disabled, which is how many people likely have their accounts set up.

Until just a few years ago, mine would pop up an MFA prompt, but if you hit the "mobile website" button, it would just bypass it completely. I reported it to them for at least five years before it got fixed, and it's more likely that they just fixed it on accident.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would accept ads more easily with if they were not a privacy disaster. I’m watching a video about cars, sure show me the ad about this crappy car brand I will never buy. I’m reading an article about Prometheus, sure show me an ad about your greatest SaaS metrics platform that cost more per monitored machine than my machine. No needs for cookies and tracking.

>I would accept ads more easily with if they were not a privacy disaster. Would you really? I mean I keep hearing this but it doesn't ring true to me. People don't like ads in content because it interrupts what they are trying to consume and tries to leverage them away. This seems like a far greater motive to install an ad-blocker than some hand wavy tracking that probably doesn't even work that well.

> People don't like ads in content because it interrupts what they are trying to consume and tries to leverage them away.

Here you answered it yourself why people adblock. If ads were served on either side of the holy grail layout like the good ol days it wouldnt have been such a pain in the ass.

I remember jumping on the ad-blocking wagon when google started serving their shitty ads in between scroll content, serving diseased peoples photo ( ketto.org ) and getting frighteningly accurate/curated ads of what I searched for previously. Literally fuck google for having a digital private investigator on my ass 24/7 just to sell me shit. I am gonna use ad-blocker till the end of time.

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